Carole: With an E. I have two questions. One concerns
your methodology, and I’ll ask this as quickly as I can. We know
that Yahweh promised the land of Israel to the descendants of Abraham
and Jacob and Sarah, but we also know from reading parts of the Koran
that apparently Allah did the same thing to the descendants of Ishmael.
To me this says something about the nature of God. He’s playing
tricks the way a trick was played on Job for example. Put them in an impossible
situation and then see what they’re going to do. How do you reconcile
this view of God?

John: The first view is I do not believe that
Allah is Yahweh Elohim. I believe it traces to the Sumerian moon god,
and what Muhammad did was he brought him into service for his own political
agenda to unify the Arabs. That’s my first conviction. Now why do
I say that? I say it--and you asked me the methodological question in
a moment, but part of my methodology was to show how the Bible understands
Yahweh versus how the Koran understands Allah, and to compare the two.

And what the Koran does, coming through one man at one time, is it says
whatever is in the Jewish and Christian Bible that’s not consistent
with what comes in 612 A.D. is to be jettisoned. So they throw out all
accountability to Jewish and Christian history.

So for example, all the archaeological evidence shows that Jews have been
there since X-thousand years B.C. and so forth. And so the Koran basically
throws that all out on its own terms.

Let me go back a little bit deeper. What is the source of the war between
Isaac and Ishmael? And I didn’t make this earlier and I’m
glad to make this point now. It’s the brokenness of the covenant
of marriage.

Abram and Sarah before their names were changed to Abraham and Sarah,
Abraham and Sarah were promised they would have a child in their old age
and Abraham believed it. Sarai became impatient and says to Abram, take
Hagar, my Egyptian maid servant. So she broke the covenant of marriage
and he agreed, and so he slept with her, conceived, and as soon as Hagar
knew she was pregnant, she despised Sarai because she realized Sarai used
her as a piece of property to further her own family building attempt.
And there’s a war between the women.

So before Ishmael is born, there is a war between the women, and it wasn’t
waiting for God’s promise and God’s timetable. So this is
human energy at this point, not God’s timetable on the biblical
territory itself. Then what happens? Isaac is born 13 years later by the
supernatural provision of God, and Ishmael hates Isaac, mocks him, and
there’s a war between the two sons because of the war between the
two mothers, and Abraham’s caught in between because he let it happen.

He loves his son Ishmael, but it was done by the power of the flesh. And
because it was done by the power of the flesh and especially breaking
the covenant of marriage, that led to the war between the two women and
the sense of Ishmael being an orphan in the presence of his very father.
He really grew up as a fatherless boy. He was diagnosed as a wild donkey
of a man.

So the whole conflict goes back to that point and so if we’re honest
it starts with that sin. But from that point on forward what the Koran
has done is said that the promise given to Isaac really was given to Ishmael,
but it has no historical ability to go back to the Bible on its own terms
and show that to be the case.

Carole: I will think about all that.

John: Okay, please do.

Carole: On your methodology this evening, I have a question.
Because of your own very deep Christian faith, it seems to me that you
have taken the best of Christianity and contrasted it with the worst of
Muslim religion. For example, I’m very glad to hear that men and
women are equal, that’s good news. But why has it taken the church
like 2000 years to figure this out? Every group of church fathers, the
Calvinists and everybody else, said women shall be subject to husband
and that’s it. Women were barely considered to be human beings for
many centuries, so it seems to me that you’re taking the best of
Christianity and comparing with the worst of Muslim thought.

John: I believe I’m not, okay, and I’m
accountable for anyone who can press me if in case I am. Let me make this
observation. In volume one of my three volume set, First the Gospel, then
Politics, I have an over 200-page chapter on human sexuality. I trace
everything from Genesis on forward. I’m going to give you a very
succinct answer. In Genesis 1 and 2, men and women are equal. When sin
comes in, and men try to rule over women and women try to connive around
men, which is the history of the war between the sexes, we have sexism
showing itself in ugly profile through the Bible. The Bible never condones
it, but it identifies it. And everything is subject to that reality. Some
texts are hard to understand because we don’t know the cultural
shorthand of the language used in the New Testament, for example. And
those are issues that I deal with thoroughly.

Now, this was also understood and very equitable in the early church.
However, many of the founding fathers were very much influenced by Greek
and Gnostic thought. Origin castrated himself because he had such a low
view of human sexuality, that’s a Gnostic thought. The very Hebrew
and pre-Hebrew thought is that sexuality is good between one man and one
woman and one lifetime. So your critique is well taken, and it’s
a critique I agree with. The church has not followed through, but the
church is not been faithful to its origin in Genesis 1 and 2.

So what I’m always saying is, judge everything back to the origins
of what we say we believe in, and if we take every other religious origin
text and go back to its origins, there is sexism from the beginning. From
the beginning there is no sexism, as soon as sin comes in, sexism all
over the place.

Carole: So you’re blaming it on free will then?
That messed God’s good intentions up.

John: That’s an excellent question. What
is the origin of evil? I gave a little statement earlier, God loved us
enough to let us say no. So what it means, and this is my understanding,
the power to give is God’s nature, but a gift forced down the throat
is not a gift, is it? It’s an imposition. Therefore, the very nature
of God giving us freedom to be creative stewards of this planet means
he gives freedom as well, otherwise we’re robots, otherwise we’re
slaves.

So the necessary risk-taking corollary of giving freedom is we might say
no. Another way of putting it is God gave us--God loves us enough to let
us say no. So yes, God is saying I love all of you enough to give you
the freedom whether or not to accept my love. And so I ask you what better
equation is there in human history? Otherwise we’re forced into
one angle or another.

Carole: There’s still one problem here. One needs
very great deep Christian faith to have your positive view of the church;
that’s the odd thing about Muslims also. One needs to be looking
at it from the inside even to understand how it can possibly work and….

John: Right, and that’s a very fair question,
why I gave my limitations, and we talked about the Bible on its own terms,
the Koran on its own terms, and how can I do my best to be accountable
to tough questions for those who come against me or who would disagree
with me, and I will come back with this observation. Islam has no concept
of the image of God universal in all people. The word for peace comes
out of the word submission. If you submit to our religion, there will
be peace. And that submission can be by force if necessary.

Now what the inclusive nature of Genesis says is we’re all made
in God’s image. We all seek peace, order, stability, and hope. So
what I seek to do is I admit that I can only look at it from within a
Christian framework, but I also came from a skeptical framework.

And I had a great discussion for an hour the other night at Wesleyan with
a student who was disagreeing with me. And I said, what can I do better
if I admit my partisanship, what can I do more honestly but to put myself
in the firing line of the toughest questions continually? I know of no
more humble and intellectually rigorous way to be accountable. So I can’t
understand the full Muslim understanding as a Muslim, but I do believe
biblically, I can touch the image of God in all of us, and understand
they’re seeking peace, order, stability, and hope.

And so I ask the most important question, in the face of such conflict
how can we communicate? And I’m striving to do that, but I also
need to speak the truth, and speaking the truth in terms of the measurements
of history and the text.

Carole: Have you spoken on a program with a Muslim?

John: I would love to find one willing and I’ve
tried very hard, you can’t find them. And if there’s one to
do it, I’m glad to do it.

George: My name is George.

John: Hi George.

George: The views that you’re expressing are expressed
by very few Christian people. In fact there seems to be almost a fear
to express that view either in the church or in the church in secular
society. You’re a very small minority, Chuck Colson, Professor Hutchinson.
What do you, what is your view about the failure of the church to take
a stand in this battle?

John: You know Carole just talked about me taking
a charitable view towards history. What I do is I take a realistic view
of history and a very charitable view for the power of touching God’s
image in spite of our sins. And this comes to how I answer your question.

George: I wanted to ask a question in the context of
your saying kind of a world conference and people just dialoguing, but
you aren’t going to have Christians willing to dialogue on the basis
that you want to see dialogue. And there’s a fear.

John: I believe so much that if you create terms
where people know they will be heard regardless of what they say, then
truth can come up. There are a lot of Christians afraid to say what they
believe. George Bush, he says Islam is a peaceful religion. He’s
either wrong or exceedingly brilliant. Wrong, because it’s not a
peaceful religion, it’s by the sword, but he could be quoting an
Arabic definition of peace, and therefore putting it in language whereby
their own terms they are.

But his instinct is very Christian underneath. He doesn’t want a
war with the people. He wants to touch the image of God in people. He
wants peace, he’s a committed Christian man. He’s looking
at the political sense and saying, how can I represent the Prince of Peace?
That’s the same question I ask. How do we go about doing it? So
I really posed to myself the toughest question. In the face of such controversy,
how can we proceed? How is it possible? So this idea of the Presidential
Convocation is rooted in the history of my Mars Hill Forums, and an example
was Thursday night at Wesleyan. That’s one of the toughest forums
I’ve been in the presence of.

And what happened was, with the deep passion of homosexual rights activists,
the graffiti they had on the sidewalks as I came in was the most sexually
violent graffiti you can imagine against my life and my person. And that’s
how the forum started, and I didn’t respond to it in those terms.
And by the end of it there was actually vital conversation.

I was told that ten years ago a Christian group on campus tried to have
a forum on homosexuality, it degraded into a shouting match. As a result
the Christians lost reputation on campus for five or six years and have
been gun-shy ever since. I got three e-mails the day before yesterday
saying John, because of this forum the whole attitude has reversed direction.
And people want to have more of this. Well, I’m humbled by that.

That’s a real blessing. I sought to speak the truth but to speak
it in love. I’m not always sure how well I do in that. But I do
believe the image of God is there and people want to be heard. But you
know in Islamic nations, the people don’t have a right to vote.
They don’t have a right to be heard. It’s their elitists who
are there, so how do you make a difference in that context?

So I will always be as charitable as I can to the image of God in any
person. I always look and I’m willing to be violated in the process
in terms of my own rights. I’m always willing to look for that spark
of hope in a person. If I risk touching that, speaking the truth but giving
liberty of dissent; that’s the best prescription I know of.

Alexis: My name is Alexis.

John: Hi, Alexis.

Alexis: Your didactic approach has been to always go
back to the origin on Islam and Christianity. In that respect you explain
the animosity between Ishmael and Isaac. Can we, from this, deduce that
there will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians? They both
are the sons of Ishmael and Isaac and therefore is this didactic approach
to the origin tell us there will be no peace?

John: Well, very good question. First of all,
I tried to say that the Bible starts with a story, and then the doctrine,
so I want to talk the story before I become didactic. But it’s necessary
to move into our didaction, which I’ve sought to do.

So the whole idea of this Presidential Convocation is to allow people
to share their stories. Now what could happen? Let’s look at what
the Bible says. There will be Armageddon before Jesus returns. But before
Jesus returns, the Gospel will be preached, heard, and understood, I believe
by the whole creation.

Now how does this happen? It’s not just people hearing John 3:16
once. I think it’s the Gospel being lived in the midst of people,
which means religious, political, and economic liberty, and prosperity.
So that just like the Jews in Exodus knew that God was good and provided
for them, before Jesus returns, all people will have seen that goodness
tangibly demonstrated.

So, eschatologically, my sense is I don’t know what can happen,
but I do know that I will do everything I can to be an agent of the Prince
of Peace. And if my theology is right on the timetable on the return of
Jesus, I have great hope of being able to succeed by letting--the Palestinians
aren’t even a historic people. They’re a whole bunch of different
people racially; they’re recently created. But let’s talk
about the Arabs and the Jews. That’s what it comes down to. Let
me take ten seconds to answer his question and then we’ll do exactly
that.

I understand the challenge of that, and I don’t know everything,
but I do know that I will labor my best to see communication happen where
it doesn’t happen. And I do have a great confidence in the image
of God. If you allow people to tell their stories with no limit on their
freedom and time and go all the way back to their self-understood origins,
I think that possibly communication and building trust increases. And
the final observation is, it will take a generational change at some level,
but how can that change ever happen without that pattern of communication.

Well, great, let’s stand up and anyone who wants to leave, go ahead
and leave, and I’ll stay for another formal 15 minutes and we’ll
conclude at 10 of 9 for those who want to stay.

Male Voice: It’s very interesting listening to
you speak, and I’ve gotten a lot out of it. I must confess that
I’m not as devout by any matter of means as you are. But you said
a number of things that I don’t know as a people here have really--I
hope they’ve grasped.

But you said a couple of key words which I believe is the source for all
the conflict that we presently see in the Arab world, especially with
the Palestinians, etc. And that is that these people are not given an
opportunity to listen, to forgive, and to recognize differences in people.
And this really has been brought about a lot, I think, by the political
structure where these people live. Most of the people in the fanatical
Islamic world all live in dictatorship areas. You go to places where there’s
much more freedom of government such as Malaysia, etc. where I’ve
dealt with people and there are Muslim people there, and believe me, they
think level-headed, the way we do.

John: Or in Turkey.

Male Voice: Yeah or Turkey, they think much more level-headed,
as we do. What’s happened in these areas where people haven’t
been taught to forgive, etc., I think it’s really because their
political leaders, who for the most part are corrupt, the people have
a lot of hate built up inside them. And the political leaders don’t
want the hate to be taken out against the government, so they say as long
as these people have a lot of hate built up, let’s let them blow
off steam toward the Christian and the Jewish community. This way the
frustration will be taken off there instead of us the leaders who are
ripping them off all the time.

And so the people have not been taught to forgive and the government doesn’t
want them to forgive. They want them to build up hate and to vent this
hate toward the Christians and the Jews. And that way the government,
they perceive, will not have the risk of being overthrown. A lot of us
really have to look back in recent history, and a lot of people who we
think are fanatics, that are crazy and how can they be like this, it’s
really not the people, it’s the leaders.

Take an example of China during the Cultural Revolution, we thought that
they were all a bunch of maniacs over there. They weren’t really
maniacs. The leaders were maniacs, they were steering the people through
the control of the press, etc. to act like maniacs. They really weren’t.
When the people got their freedoms over there which they have to relevant
extent now, we find they’re really nice people just as we are.

I think in the Muslim world basically, I have the belief that everybody
is born good, and the things that surround you in the environment make
you appear not to be good. These are really good people, but their political
leaders have warped themselves. That’s why we all think that they’re
fanatics and crazy. That their religion is totally out of whack with reality,
when really that need not be the case, if these people had the freedom
to express themselves, and sit down, and think rationally and understand
what’s going on outside their religion. How can they forgive people
or understand people outside their religion when they’re not allowed
to understand or communicate or read a free press?

John: Let me just interject there a second. You’ve
given a lot of good observations. In a nutshell, you have diagnostically
given us a good profile but there are far deeper realities as well. Tyrannies
are always there. There’s no doctrine of forgiveness in the Koran,
and so what cultural history do you have for that forgiveness to begin
with? The very nature of the Koran leads to totalitarian government.

This is what I believe. I don’t believe we’re all born good.
I believe that sin has affected us. Sin is a brokenness of relationship,
a brokenness of trust that leads us to grab for what we need instead of
receiving it, given in a good society.

And so what I affirm is the strivings of the image of God for goodness
in all people, the POSH L’s, if you will, the image of God. And
it’s also true that you’ve got tyrannies in these non-democratic
countries, but the only basis there is for unalienable rights in a democratic
and constitutional republic is the God of the Bible in Genesis, not Allah,
or not the Hindu concept or some other concept. All people are striving
for those realities, but they don’t have a basis for it. So I think
a lot of what you say is diagnostically true, but I’m going to go
deeper to the actual religious nature.

If we look at nearly 1400 years of Islam’s march, there is not one
indigenous Jew or Christian in Saudi Arabia today, nor have they been
for, I think 1,400 years. They were all killed. And most of the churches
in what is now called Palestine, which is a Roman name, to get rid of
the Jewish identity, the church was wiped out tremendously. All across
Northern Egypt the church was wiped out. It was the majority reality in
the Seventh Century, and the Muslims swept in and destroyed them for pillage,
for their economic aggrandizement, and so forth.

So there’s a history there that cannot be ignored, and so what I
have to do is I have to be accountable to that history. But as a Christian,
I am no more righteous than a Muslim person apart from the grace of God.
But the question is who is God, where does that grace come from, and then
here’s the most important question, how do I demonstrate it?

A lot of people, you’re right, are given no ability to express themselves
in Arabian countries, and the Palestinians are the pawns of Arabian countries
against the Jews and their hatred to the Jews. And my heart breaks for
the Palestinians in that regard, and particularly if they’re raised
for decade after decade of being told lies about the source of their squalor.